ArmoredRodent
Well-Known Member
Yes, there is some truth in what you say: sometimes the same arguments are made over and over, especially when new participants who haven't reviewed jump in and ask the same questions and get the same answers, over and over.I mean. Am I wrong? What purpose has this thread served? Ask yourself has this thread benefited the community in any way? Have there been some informative conversions? Yes, during the first 2 months. Otherwise, no. I’ve seen nothing but divisiveness and nastiness towards each other.
But you may be overlooking the purpose of a long thread, which is to follow a rapidly-changing environment, even if people are not converted. And this thread has constantly evolved, discussing lots of new concepts, updating statistics, tracking changing governmental regulation and medical innovations. And the discussions are actually at a pretty high level much of the time, with lots of information and such clear explanations (of many, though not all, things) that some challenges are answered concisely and don't pop up again for a while.
But more to your point: if you let "divisiveness and nastiness" be the metric, you're basically asking extremists to be as nasty and divisive as possible in an effort to "win." Which seems self-defeating to your point. "Heckler's vetoes" are never a good idea.
A lot of the time, the answer is to treat those you disagree with as someone with a point of view that you should at least review and consider. If it's something you heard already a thousand times, then the effort to do that is limited. You can just skim, and read a full page in a few seconds. If, OTOH, someone deserves to be ignored, then ignore them.
But informed conversions have occurred here. More importantly, informed discussions, based on facts (sometimes disputed), and realistic, reasonable arguments, have also occurred here, and continue to do so. Progress is being made. I haven't had to jump into a discussion of sophisticated legal concepts here since Sept. 22, which to me is a pretty concrete indicator of progress. YMMV